Bishop Sheen Being Evicted From His Crypt in Saint Patrick's Cathedral NYC - Bones Worth More in Illinois Religious Market Than NYC Market

Archdiocese of New York gives up fight over Bishop Sheen’s remains

Door to the bishop's crypt under the altar btw opposite a door leading to the sacristy and altar boy's changing room (wink, nod). Millionaire banker Eugene Kelly who started his substantial fortune in the gold fields of California in 1849 paid for half the original cathedral and got denied a crypt promised to him in the "private chapel", the original "crypt" under the Lady's Chapel, now rented out by the hour in the basement. Countess Annie Leary promised a spot there too but her niece ripped her off and never gave the archdiocese the $200,000 promised in her will in 1919 for said purpose. Miss Anna Leary cited over years for keeping two houses, in Manhattan and Queens, full of cats and dogs which the ASPCA had to clean out and destroy every ten years or so for neglect ("cruelty"). Miss Leary died alone and blind, aged 91, and in the care, in the house of her housekeeper in Hastings on Hudson in 1965 and worth half a million dollars and without a will. Oh the bricks and faux stone facades of St. Patrick's have a lot of tales to tell. Meow.


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My Latest on Kindle - Joe the Deuce and the Vampire Priest of Gay Nineties New York

Backstairs gossip about forgotten bigger than life rich Irish Micks of the New York Gilded Age centering on the politics and lives of several generations of Irish immigrants from the Revolution through the Irish Famine and onto the gilded age, intermingled with Tammany Hall, the Civil War, Mrs.William Astor's "400" society circle and the decades long building of one gothic style cathedral on Fifth Avenue. Meet infamous lawyer James T. Brady, Judge John R. Brady, independently wealthy priest of St.Leo's Father Thomas Ducey, eccentric Countess Annie Leary, John Eno the immature embezzler banker who almost brought on a stock market crash in 1884 along with elements of religion, the supernatural, demons and much more.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N9SQQBV




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Countess Annie Leary Burial Vaunt - Under Old Saint Patrick's Cathedral NYC

Old St. Patrick's Cathedral and Graveyard NYC

http://urbanomnibus.net/2012/02/a-walk-down-mulberry-street-with-monsignor-sakano/

Papal Countess Annie Leary 1832-1919

http://thisculturalchristian.blogspot.com/2014/06/countess-annie-leary-1832-1919.html

Leary Family Burial Vault Under Old St. Patrick's Cathedral NYC

One of Several Corridors of Burial Vaults Under Old St. Patrick's Cathedral


http://www.timeout.com/newyork/things-to-do/take-a-photo-tour-of-the-crypts-underneath-st-patricks-old-cathedral-slide-show.

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Countess Annie Leary - "Summer Cottage" - Newport Rhode Island

"Park Gate" - Pelham Street and Bellevue Avenue

The Leary Summer "Cottage" from the Gilded Age of Countess Annie Leary and her brother Arthur - now an Elks Lodge meeting hall in Newport Rhode Island. 

Image: Countess Annie Leary
NY Tribune 17 Sept 1911 (copyright expired)

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http://thisculturalchristian.blogspot.com/2014/06/countess-annie-leary-1832-1919.html

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Countess Annie Leary of New York City Evicted From Her Fifth Avenue Mansion – 1904

Photo Source: Both Sides of Fifth Ave. J.F.L.Collins 1910

https://archive.org/stream/collinsbothsides00newy#page/12/mode/2up

This is perhaps a bit silly but there is so little available on the life of Countess Annie Leary of NYC that a bit of gossip in a tattle mag of the time says a lot about interest in the rich and famous even back then.

Broadcast Weekly 14 April 1904

The way this is written I am not certain if Countess Annie was evicted from her long term home at 3 Fifth avenue, which I cannot find a picture of yet – or she first left that perhaps childhood home at 3 Fifth Avenue when a 99 year lease, made by her father James Leary the Merchant/Hatter, on the land it was built on expired in 1902. That the two year lease is perhaps another rental further up Fifth Avenue and that too became unavailable as developers were tearing down these old brick or brownstone mansions and building apartment buildings in the teens and 1920s.

In any case, Annie seems to have been "homeless" for a few short years while she finally moved into digs at 1032 Fifth Avenue between 84^th Street and 85^th Street and in sight of the Metropolitan Museum of Art across the road, located within the boundaries of Central Park.

The house at 1032 Fifth Avenue was a fixer upper, a renovation and re-clad in white stone of a bunch of spec townhouses built in the 1870s. In the image of 1032 above, the building next door at 1033 is still a brownstone as of 1910, and 1034 was being converted at the same time with Annie’s 1032 in 1905 with the “rebuilt front wall” and getting in Annie’s case a three story extension in back where the stables used to be. 

April 1905

The building progress report lists Countess Leary’s no doubt temporary address as 16 E 75^th Street.

1033 btw is still standing with a white stone re-clad and squeezed between two tall apartment buildings.

                                              1033 Fifth Avenue NYC                                          
                                                                                                                                          Google Maps

The smart looking townhouse at 1032 Fifth Avenue is described in some accounts as a mansion and I guess it is, was, but maybe a little bit cramped – less space I would say in square footage than 3 Fifth Ave from Plot Maps I have seen – but the difference is of course made up by location, location, location. 

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